you combine, say, about $250 billion in spending and tax cuts. that will probably cut gdp with the usual multiplier efforts of two percentage points. that's enough to raisen employment by a couple of percentage points. it's serious business. >> ali, what do you think? >> yeah. well, look, i think peter is right. the spending cuts that would be imposed by the fiscal cliff would be devastating. it would send unemployment higher. it would cost jobs. the republicans, as peter says, are going to insist on some cuts anyway, so bottom line is we are going to see a weaker economy into the beginning of next year. probably one way or the other. now, the counter to that, peter, is that there are forces in the economy that are strengthening it. this energy boom that we've got, the natural gas, the amount of fracturing that we're doing, the fact that housing has been doing tremendously well, and interest rates remain very low with prices, so there's some sense that there's a bit of a renaissance on the horizon, and if the government doesn't mess that up too m